Ira Rides His Bike: July 2008

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Portland to San Francisco - Final Thoughts

The ride from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, CA is in the books. We rode a total of 12 days and covered 792 miles. We were on the bike for 52 hours, 31 minutes and 7 seconds for an average of about 4 1/2 hours per day. Total average for the ride was 15.1 mph with a maximum speed of 46.3 mph. My average heart rate was 105 beats per minute and my max was 174. We climbed 44,214 feet with an average of 3684 feet per day. I will forever have many fond memories of the ride - from our start in Portland where we met Jerry who rode 85 miles the day BEFORE our ride started, to the time we all spent together traversing the highways down the coast. It is clear that time spent with friends and family on the bike, while traveling through some of the beautiful countryside on earth, is time well spent. The route was not easy - it had many hills and rarely any flats. The winds blew at our backs most of the days. We had no rain and only a few flats. We all arrived safely in San Francisco and had no major events. I'm glad I was able to show Daniel, the beauty the United States has to offer after he and Gary showed me the beauty of France last summer.

For those who wish they can do a ride like this or any other - please make it a priority. Life goes by us all much too quickly and there is nothing better to slow down and take it all in - than riding a bike. This route was not easy. Daniel and Gary both suffered and Daniel finished the ride in spite of the suffering.

We plan to take this experience to Europe next summer. Anyone interested?

About Ira and his Bike(s)

My name is Ira and I ride my bike. I do lots of other things but all through my life, on again and off again, I have ridden my bike. When I was a little guy, I got into collecting stamps. I loved old stamps and in order to find them, I needed to ride my bike to far away post offices to search for the best. On the weekends, my friend, Steve Spengler and I would pack our lunch, fill our backpacks and ride our bikes to places like Lawndale, Torrance and if we were really ambitious, San Pedro. We would make sure that every post office in each city was on our route and we would visit each one in hopes of finding the oldest and best stamps.Back then, I rode a red Schwinn Varsity - 31 pounds and 10 gears. I would zoom "down the hill" from my home in Palos Verdes to Torrance and I would call my mom to pick me up and drive me back up the hill. Even back then, I didn't care for climbing hills. My Schwinn Varsity was a great bike, but I always had longed for Peugeot U10. The Peugeot was an exotic French machine and only weighed 28 pounds. With this bike, I figured maybe, just maybe, I would be able to ride my bike both down the hill and back up.When I was 15, I got a job at Mayers bakery cleaning the floors and dishes. I received $1.35 an hour and I socked all of the money away to pay for my new Peugeot. It was now 1973 and my new Peugeot would cost $179.00. After a few months working at Mayers, the new Peugeot was mine!I rode my Peugeot everywhere. In 1973, I got involved with American Youth Hostels. The AYH group in Palos Verdes sponsored bicycle rides on the weekends. I joined AYH and routinely rode 50-75 miles on the weekends. We would go up the coast to Malibu or Trancas or down the coast to Seal Beach or Huntington Beach. We would sometimes bring backpacks and camp on the beach and if I was really tired at the end of my ride, I would call my mom to drive me up the hill. (I still didn't like to climb).At the end of 1973 and early 1974, one of my friends, Tim Roach, invited me to ride in a "club race" with the Lomita bicycle Peddlers. I rode and raced and loved it! I began to ride almost every day and was bitten by the bicycle racing bug!Soon after I started racing, I bought my first racing bike, a Stella. Stella was a beautiful French machine with simplex derailleurs and Campagnolo brakes and sew-up tires. Sew-ups's are the tires that you glue to the rim. Back then there were no hi-pressure, low profile clinchers. In order to get 100 pounds of pressure in a tire, sew-ups were the only way to go. In order to patch a tire, you had to take the stitches out of the tire, patch the tube and stitch the tire back up!During my racing days I was fortunate to be able to travel throughout the US racing my bike. At the end of high school in 1976, I rode my Stella to first place in the California State Championships road race and 10th place in the National Championships in Louisville, Kentucky. I also rode a Raleigh track bike to 3rd place in the California State Championships on the velodrome.In 1981, my stamp-riding buddy, Steve Spengler and I rode our bikes, not to the local post office, but across the US - from Portland, Oregon to Burlington Vermont. On this ride, I didn't call mom to pick me up. It was a trip I will never forget.Over the years, I have ridden many different bikes, including Colnago, 3Rensho, Griffon, Teledyne and Masi and Merlin. Just recently, after wrecking my Colnago by driving my Porsche into my garage, with my Colnago bolted to my roof-rack, I bought a Cervelo. The Cervelo soloist carbon frame is one of the lightest ever made and I need all the help I can get.

Ira Rides His Bike

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Portland to San Francisco - Final Thoughts

About Ira and his Bike(s)

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